1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic document update notification device and an electronic document update notifying method. More specifically, the present invention relates to an electronic document update notification device and an electronic document update notifying method for notifying a user of the update contents of the electronic document.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is known a system for monitoring the update of electronic document on a file server or a web site and for notifying a user of the update thereof. Using such a system makes it possible for a user to know the update of information without confirming the update by accessing the Web site and to reduce the load of confirming the update.
In the notifying method disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2005-25620 (hereafter, referred to as patent document 1), for example, the data of the document file specified by a user is collected according to an arbitrary schedule to notify the user of the update information of the file. According to this notifying method, the name of file is identified as an identifier in the document file and difference data is created by comparing the data before update with the data after update in the same document. With such difference data, the URL, etc. for displaying the number of the updated parts, the outline of the updated part or the updated part are notified the user.
With the notifying method in the patent document 1, since the file name is used as the identifier of the document file, the update notification cannot be received in the case, for example, where the file after update is created with another name by indicating the update file name by the date of update.
The example in such a case is described by using a display example of the Web page in FIG. 8. FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram describing the conventional electronic document update notifying method and shows an example of display screen of the case where a top page 10 of the Web site of a certain company is displayed with a browser. The top page 10 includes: a header field 11 for displaying the title of the Web site; a menu field 12 for displaying a menu; a main field 13 for displaying the contents of the item selected from the menu; and a footer field 14 including the copyright notice, etc. of the Web site.
In the menu displayed in the menu field 12, a link is provided for an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) file with the contents of each menu described. A user can have the HTML file of the link displayed in the main field 13 by moving a mouse cursor to a string of the menu to be selected and clicking the button.
In a menu 15 for displaying “What's New”, for example, an URL (Uniform Resource Locator) 16 indicated as a link is specified. A file 18 shows the contents of the HTML file in the URL 16 and the contents of the file 18 are displayed in the main field 13 by selecting the menu 15. In addition, a file name “20060316.html” of the file 18 indicates the date of update and shows that the file 18 was updated on Mar. 16, 2006.
An URL 17 is the URL of the file after update of the file 18 and a file 19 shows the contents of the file after update. The file 19 was updated on Mar. 17, 2006 as shown by the file name “20060317.html” in the URL 17.
With the method according to the patent document 1, when the update information of such a Web site is desired to be confirmed, the update information cannot be received since the registered URL 16 is different from the URL 17 of the file after update even if the URL 16 is registered as the notified party of the update notification.